Chapter Text
In the myriadic year of our Lord - the nine thousand nine hundredth year of the King Undying, the kindly Prince of Death! - Sorsha Tanthalos landed her shuttle on the planet of Tir Asleen in the backwater Andowyne system. Cast adrift after the banishment of her mother, the infamous necromancer Bavmorda, and unwelcome in both the Nine Houses and the more populated unconquered regions of the galaxy, Sorsha was seeking peace and safety for herself and the child she already suspected was inside her. With her were her lover Madmartigan, a man named Willow who was rumored to be a capable necromancer despite being born into an ordinary family far from the heart of the Nine Houses, and an infant who at mere months old had shown necromantic power that rivaled that of Bavmorda herself.
Sorsha immediately spent a portion of her not-inconsiderable inheritance erecting a barrier that promised to shield her adopted planet from all necromantic and technological scrutiny. Then she and her companions spread out across the system, integrating with the local population and settling into quiet lives.
In the nine thousand nine hundred and twentieth year of the King Undying, Kit Tanthalos and Jade Claymore saddled their horses and set out for what was supposed to be an ordinary morning ride.
Some people bemoaned the high price of fuel on this end of the galaxy and the way it forced all but the wealthy to conserve and rely on horses and carts and bicycles for short trips. Jade mostly didn’t mind. She liked the feeling of the wind in her face, the way a ride gave her and Kit time to talk just the two of them, the way her horse Peppercorn would nudge her for treats and affection while she got her ready to ride.
If the weather was bad Kit would pick her up in the old car she shared with Airk. It had certainly seen better days - one or two of the lights on the dashboard were always on and the paint was scratched and chipping all over, but it ran and it was warm and dry inside and therefore far better than what most people had.
This was one of the benefits of being best friends with Kit, whose family fortune was sizable if ill-gotten. Another benefit was getting to spend nights at her house whenever Kit asked (and Kit asked often). Kit’s home had enough hot water for a warm shower whenever you wanted it, without even having to heat the water up first or set a timer to make sure there was enough for the next person. The electricity never flickered off in the middle of a tv program and caused you to miss important bits of the plot, and the heater was plenty powerful even on the coldest nights.
Apparently all of these things were perfectly ordinary elsewhere in the galaxy, but as nice as flashy cars and heaters that worked were, having too many of them might make the Emperor of the Nine Houses decide your home planet was nice enough to be worth taking over. And if the Houses arrived, you could kiss your comfortable and peaceful life goodbye.
Today was a nice day - sunny outside and just a bit chilly. Not uncomfortably so but enough that they wouldn’t be sweltering later. So Jade and Kit rode. They didn’t have any particular destination in mind. Perhaps they’d go to the next town over which was big enough to have a movie theater that showed whatever reels they managed to acquire, usually scratched up and fuzzy films that had been made off-world a decade ago or more, plus a whole street of restaurants and taverns to choose from. Or perhaps they’d ride in the other direction, where there was nothing but open country and they could spend the morning just the two of them.
First, though, they stopped for breakfast. Their favorite place (one of the only places, really) was a cafe near Kit’s home that served absolutely delicious pastries, ones that shouldn’t even by rights exist on a planet where there were routine butter and sugar shortages. But exist they did and Jade couldn’t get enough of them. The creator of these masterpieces was an angelic-looking redheaded girl about their age who had been creating quite a stir since she started baking several years earlier. Customers loved her buttered muffins and they also loved her… other attributes. Kit, while in general not immune to delicious pastries and very much not immune to pretty girls, mostly seemed to barely notice the muffin girl. Until, that was, muffin girl had caught Airk’s eye. After that she always had a snide word about her to say to Jade in an aside even as she continued to purchase pastries by the half dozen. Jade thought it was just a bit unfair. Sure, Airk made himself look ridiculous with his pursuit of a new girl every month, but that wasn’t muffin girl’s fault. She knew well enough what it was like to be drawn in by a Tanthalos with their floppy hair and pretty blue eyes and way of looking at you like you were the only other person on the planet. And it’s not like Kit had never made a fool of herself chasing after a girl.
Pickings at the bakery counter were slim that morning. A few muffins sat in the display case, looking sad and shrunken and slightly burned.
“Looks like muffin girl is off her game,” Kit said to Jade. “Three months, that might be a record for Airk. He always moves on in the end, though.”
A clerk bustled over. “Morning. So sorry about the selection today. It’s Elora’s day off, she’s gallivanting somewhere with her young man.”
“Nuts,” Kit muttered in an undertone.
They each ordered one anyway, plus a coffee for Jade. It would have to be instant until the next trading ship made it past the barrier checkpoint, but it still did the trick. (Kit, a snob at heart, insisted that it did not do the trick and stubbornly refused to have even a sip of the fake stuff.)
Out on the street again, they untied their horses and started walking towards the main road out of town. Jade tried the muffin. Much too dry. Hopefully Elora would be back tomorrow.
“Shit,” Kit hissed. “Walk faster, I think I see Lili.”
Kit and Lili had broken up nearly a year ago and Kit still acted like the possibility of running into her in the street was a dire situation. Pretty ridiculous in a town as small as this one. They were constantly having to duck down alleyways or leave the only good tavern to get away from her, and Jade was pretty sure Kit had avoided being face to face with her even once in the time since their breakup. Jade, meanwhile, was at least on speaking terms with the few girls she’d dated.
Jade followed Kit’s lead anyway, speeding up and joining the heavier traffic on the way out of town. “You know, you wouldn’t have this problem if you would just talk to her like a normal person. Like me and the rest of the world do with our exes.”
“Well, none of your exes are crazy,” Kit said. And, okay, Lili was admittedly probably the craziest girl in town, but if they were being fair Kit was at least in the top ten. Sometimes it made Jade question her own taste.
Jade banished the thought to the back of her mind. No point thinking about Kit that way when Kit had never once suggested she was interested in Jade in return. Not, of course, that Jade had ever made her own interest in Kit clear. But that was different. Jade was a refugee who had ended up in Ballantine’s care only because of luck and circumstance. Kit was rich enough to get off this rock and go anywhere she pleased, if only her mother would allow it. If she ever did set off on that great adventure she was always talking about, she wouldn’t want to be saddled with some dirt poor local orphan.
They rode out into the country today, somehow in agreement even without speaking. They’d always been like that, immediately in sync without even realizing how they’d gotten there.
“Go by the cemetery?” Jade called out.
Kit looked over at her, smiling gently and looking soft in a way she never did in company. “Of course.”
As they got close Jade slowed Peppercorn to a walk, then dismounted when she saw what she was looking for. It was early in the spring yet, but there were patches of early wildflowers just starting to show. She gathered up a small cluster of blooms, then plucked a long blade of grass and knotted it neatly around the stems. When she looked up, Kit was waiting a few strides away.
It was something Jade had done since she was a child. One morning, only a few months after Ballantine had taken her in, after she’d spent most of the night crying over the memory of her mother motionless on the ground and the way Jade had heeded her last words - ”Run, Jade!” - and run as far and fast as her short legs could carry her while her mother lay in the field with no one to tend to her, Ballantine had taken her to this very graveyard. There hadn’t been a body to bury but they’d gathered up as many flowers as they could hold and found a large stone to mark the spot and Jade had left a scrap of the shirt she’d been wearing that day, taken from the back where there weren’t any bloodstains, for her mother to remember Jade by.
The flowers and fabric had long since rotted into the earth and the stone grown so much over with moss it was impossible to tell where it lay anymore, and Jade had taken to visiting other graves.
The one she was drawn to today was decades old with weeds growing all around. Their living people must have moved on from Tir Asleen, she figured, or perhaps there was no one left who remembered them at all. Jade pulled the weeds, kicked the dead leaves away as best she could, then placed her flowers in front of the marker. Perhaps, somewhere on a planet she barely remembered and didn’t know if she would ever see again, someone was doing the same for her mother.
When she was ready, Kit was waiting for her. She passed Peppercorn’s reins to Jade in silence and they both mounted up.
They hadn’t gone a step, though, when Kit reached for her, fingers scrabbling at Jade’s sleeve and other hand going to her lips to motion Jade quiet.
Jade stilled, then heard it. Hoofbeats, multiple sets. Going fast. Either they were in a hurry to get somewhere or they were in a hurry to get to Kit and Jade. Bandits on the road weren’t unheard of, especially not at the beginning of the growing season when too much time had passed since the last trading ship.
Jade felt for her throwing stars in the pouch at her belt and, once satisfied, reached for the hilt of her sword. Kit did likewise, and then they waited. No sense coming out swinging if it turned out to be ordinary travellers like themselves.
The hoofbeats came closer and closer, and Jade’s breath came fast even though she was sitting still. She could see Kit’s chest heaving as well, her eyes wide and frightened, and she realized suddenly that as much as they’d trained together neither of them had ever had to fight someone who wanted them dead.
She could make out four riders, with hoods pulled over their heads and masks over their faces to hide them from sight. Definitely bandits, then. But only four, they were only outnumbered two-to-one, perhaps they would be alright.
And then Jade saw the other four, coming around from the opposite direction and maneuvering to circle them. Fuck. Maybe if they got lucky and the bandits were in a good mood that day and Kit didn’t run her mouth off they’d take the horses and leave the two of them alive?
Kit was unsheathing her sword now, Jade close behind. It was chaos, horses whinnying and blades swinging. Jade clung to Peppercorn, who kept rearing up in a panic - she’d never been trained for battle, after all, had spent her days in comfort eating hay and taking Jade on pleasure rides. Jade only managed a few good swings before she overbalanced and fell off, rolling out of the way of Peppercorn’s flailing hooves.
Jade struggled up to stand and found herself with her back to the wall of the graveyard and facing a bandit with their sword raised and ready.
And it’s right then, between an oncoming blade and a solid stone wall, that Jade saw by far the most unsettling thing she’d ever seen in her life. The ground churned, gravestones settled, cracked, leaned sickeningly to the side, were even pushed right over as the dirt underneath them rippled and gave way and the bodies began to rise.
She smelled the scent of rot, strong and close and sickening, and buried her nose in her shirt, opponent forgotten. He seemed to have forgotten her too, staring gape-mouthed at the sight in front of them. Six bodies in all, ranging from clean-picked bones with only grave dirt clinging to them, to a woman with lank strands of hair still attached to her skull and the last dregs of flesh just barely hanging on, to what must have been the newest, a child dressed in pants and shirt that had barely begun to disintegrate into strips and maggots clinging to his chubby limbs.
Jade was going to be sick right now. She leaned forward, hands on her knees, choking and heaving up bile and the remains of her muffin into the dirt in front of her. A necromancer. A necromancer on Tir Asleen. Wasn’t the barrier supposed to keep that from happening? Could it have failed? How many were there? Was it just one who had done this, or were there more somewhere?
The nausea began to subside and Jade pulled herself upright. She wasn’t cornered anymore - the bandits were on the far side of the graveyard now, hightailing it away it looked like, with the corpses forming a barricade between them and where Jade was still standing motionless. At least she and Kit weren’t under attack any more. Not an attack from any living being at least. But the bodies. The necromancer. Jade regripped her blade and got ready for the next part of the fight. She might be quaking in terror and disgust but she had to keep it together until they were safe, until she’d gotten Kit out of there.
And then… they dropped. All six of them at once, like a string had been cut. Jade stood at the ready for a full minute waiting for the necromancer’s next trick, but… nothing. Just the sound of birds twittering in the trees and the feel of the breeze on her face.
Jade cast her eyes around for Kit and found her - oh, god - lying motionless barely ten steps away. She hadn’t noticed Kit get hurt, hadn’t noticed her fall. How had she not seen? She’d done her best to keep Kit right beside her the whole time. Maybe one of the enemy had snuck past her guard while she’d been sick?
Jade ran to Kit, dropping to her knees in the mud beside her. It was even worse up close. Kit was still breathing at least, but she was pale, limp, and most upsettingly she was bleeding, two streams coagulating near her nostrils and another dripping out of the corner of one eye and trickling towards her hairline. A blow to the head, maybe? But no, Jade couldn’t feel any bumps forming on Kit’s skull and it would have to be a hard hit to leave her like this. Jade had seen her get bucked off and nearly trampled and she’d still insisted on riding her own horse home even though she’d been so woozy she could barely stay upright in the saddle.
She didn’t seem to have any other obvious injuries either. Not a drop of blood on her except for what was on her face, and nothing that looked like it was broken. Could it have been the necromancer? Could they have… done something, something horrifying and dark and wrong to Kit? Jade felt bile rising in her throat again but choked it back, no time right now, she had to get Kit to safety, to someone who could help her.
It would be risky to move Kit when she still had no idea what had hurt her and the effects, but she’d far rather take the risk than leave Kit here in the open with a necromancer on the loose. She heaved Kit up, then with some maneuvering managed to sling her across Peppercorn’s withers.
Jade roped Eclipse to Peppercorn to ensure he’d follow, then mounted Peppercorn and tried to situate Kit comfortably in front of her. Kit remained limp and Jade felt the fear building in her gut, because in their entire decade of friendship she hadn’t once known Kit Tanthalos to be so still.
Jade rode hard, trying to put as much distance between them and the bandits and the bodies and the necromancer as possible. She knew she needed to rest Peppercorn at some point, though - she had twice the load as usual and they were far from town - so when she reached a stream winding through a copse of trees she dismounted and led the horses to drink before pulling Kit down as gently as she could manage.
A tiny moan came up through Kit’s lips and she started to stir, first turning her head to nuzzle into Jade’s chest and then wrinkling her brow in consternation. Jade’s legs collapsed in relief and she sank to the ground with Kit still cradled in her arms.
“You’re okay,” Jade said, trying to keep her voice calm and soothing even though her heart was pounding. “You’re alive.” She fumbled at her belt, unhooking her canteen with one hand while heaving Kit up with her free arm until she was half sitting up with her weight on Jade. She held the canteen to Kit’s lips and Kit - thank god - finally opened her eyes and directed them at Jade in fuzzy confusion.
Kit seemed to come around more after a few sips, blinking up at Jade with gradually more focus. Once she felt more solid in Jade’s arms, less limp and more present, and had grumbled her annoyance at Jade and pulled the canteen from her hands so she could at least hold it for herself, Jade decided it was time to move to the other problem at hand.
“Kit,” she says, “there was a necromancer with the bandits. They raised corpses, a whole pack of them. We need to go right to your mother, she needs to know. I think the emperor found us.”
Kit croaked a sad, sardonic, watery imitation of a chuckle. “Wasn’t the emperor,” she said, closing her eyes and slumping back into Jade’s lap. “I think those were me.”